


an unfolding

by lalaietha



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A witch named him Edward</p>
            </blockquote>





	an unfolding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exclamations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exclamations/gifts).



> Written for exclamations for Yuletide 2013. Edward's head was really interesting to get into; I hope the fic appeals!

A witch named him Edward. 

He doesn't remember her, so he doesn't remember why. He doesn't remember what kind of witch she was or what she looked like, if she was clean or foul or had that magic of the Grand Witch to be both. It's too long ago. Too far back. He remembers she named him Edward because with naming she woke him from stone and moss to flesh and bone, the way witches make trolls. 

They make trolls to serve witches.

****

On a cold and sunny day, while her brother sleeps off the end of a concussion and the other human goes to fetch water, his new witch asks Edward about that, about his name, about where he comes from. He shrugs. Words outside his head are hard. He was made of stone and moss and it sticks, even now that it's in the bone, and it's hard to shape his mouth around sounds that humans understand. Even witches.

"Witch made me," he says. "Witch named me." 

His witch looks at him like she wants to ask more, but then stops, as if she understands what she's asking is hard. She goes back to cleaning the weapon she always carries, oiling the crossbow's stock and moving parts. "Our mother actually named us Hans and Greta," she says, suddenly, like she's sharing a secret. "Hansel and Gretel were pet names. And now it's how the whole world knows us. Like we'll always be those kids that got left - got hidden out in the woods." 

Edward doesn't understand about parents, but in the last few weeks he has come to understand that his witch doesn't know how she feels about the people who made her. She hated them for a very long time, and now for some reason she doesn't. Maybe she'll tell him one day. 

Witches tell things to trolls. They know the trolls won't tell anyone. Edward thinks about what she's said for a while, as she scrubs hard at a bolt in the crossbow and then shapes his mouth around the words, "Names are hard. Trick-y." 

His witch looks up at him and smiles, even if it's a weak, complicated smile. "That's for fucking sure," she says.

****

He didn't like the Grand Witch.

It didn't matter. Witches made him, witches ruled him: he did what they commanded anyway, because they commanded it. But he didn't like her. Didn't like them. They kicked and spit and screamed at him, called him names, and the children he stole for them cried and screamed and the cries and screams got into his dreams so he couldn't escape even when he was asleep. 

The times Edward liked best were the times the witches didn't need him, couldn't think of anything for him to do, and he could leave and be in the forest. Hunt. Shape trees. Learn from spirits and gnomes and places full of magic. He knows things. Many things. How to make hurts better. That it isn't just the water that can be full of magic, but what you drink it from. That the Moon isn't the only light in the sky that brings power or takes it away, or shapes it into one thing or another. 

The witches said once there were dragons and the dragons hoarded gold and treasure more jealous than misers and kings. Edward thinks he is like a dragon, sometimes, but what he hoards is what he knows. He knows more than the Grand Witch used to know. But he never said. 

Words are hard, and she never asked, and he didn't like her, so he would never tell her unbidden. 

His new witch, his little white witch, is different.

****

"Ew," says her brother, looking at the grease at the base of the mushroom. "That is disgusting."

"Works, though," Edward's witch says, scraping some into the wooden box she made. "Took me from 'got the shit beat out of me' to being able to take you down in a few hours." 

Her brother squints at Edward and says, "And you say he knew?" Edward gives him a patient look. He's still not sure how he feels about his witch's brother, who reminds him of an injured wolf without a pack, always snapping and wary, but also reminds him of a witch. Since males aren't witches, this bothers Edward a little. 

On the other hand, his witch's brother is devoted to his witch, so he can't complain. 

"Edward knows lots of things, don't you Edward?" his witch says, standing up out of her crouch and tucking the box away in her saddle-bags. She tilts her head at the other human male, the smaller one, and says, "This is the stuff we used on his shoulder." 

"Which was gross," says the smaller male. "For the record. It smelled disgusting." 

"It fixed a bullet-hole in your shoulder in less than a week," Edward's witch retorts. "I know you're new to this? But that's not normal." 

Edward's witch's brother looks like he's thinking and thinking deep thoughts, brow furrowed and lips slightly pursed. Then the expression goes away and he slaps Edward on the shoulder. "Good job," he says, before Edward has a chance to think of what to do. The witches hit him sometimes, but not like that. And not with praise afterwards. "Glad to have you along." 

Edward decides that's good.

****

Edward saved his witch because she is a witch. He didn't know what else she was. She was a witch, and that's all that mattered - the men from the village didn't deserve to so much as touch a witch, let alone what they meant to do.

But then she was kind. And then she was gentle. She didn't have to be. She could be wild and fierce, but she had been kind and quiet to him. She had asked him his name. She had asked him for help. The other witches had never asked him for anything. They just ordered, and hit him. 

He knew about dark witches and white witches. It wasn't about how they looked, but what they did. He knew about love because the other witches laughed and mocked the white witches for caring about it. For making magic around it. For loving human men and having children of their own that they didn't devour. The other witches mocked them, but they feared them and almost never attacked them. They drove humans to attack them instead. 

Nowadays, when Edward looks at his little white witch, he thinks about love. He was made to serve witches. He's never had much choice. Now - now he would choose to help her, even if he did. 

He wonders if that's what love means. Doing things for people because it makes them happy, wanting to do them, even if you don't have to. His witch goes into taverns because her brother wants to; her brother listens to her read out and puzzle out spells out of the book from their mother's grotto, even though Edward can smell how it upsets him, because she needs him to listen. 

Edward wonders sometimes if he loves his witch. He thinks he does.

****

At night they light fires, and as the fires burn down, Edward's witch and her men fall asleep. Edward doesn't sleep. Trolls don't need to sleep. Sometimes he wonders what it's like, to fall asleep. To lose all that time to darkness inside your head. To dream.

They all dream. The small one dreams. The brother, Hansel, dreams. And Edward's witch, his Gretel, dreams. 

When she dreams she seems small, smaller than when she wakes. She is always small, but a wolverine is small, and a wolverine will kill a wolf, attack a bear. When she is awake his witch is a wolverine, forever bristling, forever fierce. 

She sleeps beside her brother on one side, because he is hers, and beside Edward because she says he's warm. When she sleeps, when she dreams, she curls in on herself and her eyes move under her eyelids, seeing strange things inside her mind. Her face is soft and mobile. Sometimes, just as she wakes up and sleep is still in her eyes, she smiles in a way she never smiles other times, and Edward always wants to see that smile again. 

Sometimes, when her brow creases or her shoulders tighten, when she makes sounds in her sleep that says the dreams are bad, Edward reaches over and with one careful finger strokes her forehead, strokes her hair. It doesn't wake her - she trusts him - but the frown releases and the unhappy sounds stop, and she sleeps again instead. 

Edward watches the fire and watches the stars and waits for morning.


End file.
